With religion declining in our secular culture, you would think guilt would also be in retreat. Yet, it appears we are more guilt-ridden than ever. No Jewish mother needed. David Brooks covers this notion of pervasive guilt in a recent column, and refers to an excellent article by Wilfred McClay that covers this theme more thoroughly.
It seems there's something built in to our nature where we acknowledge right from wrong, justice, concern for the underdog, and privilege. We feel a moral outrage, and want to be justified by it. That's not so much the issue, as is we have lost a framework for true moral deliberation. We are instead led by emotions that are unable to see the issues more clearly.
(Which reminds me, I recently watched this debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley asking: Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro? When you watch it, you realize how far we have fallen from our moral discourse. I realize these are all Oxford students, so it doesn't represent the culture at large, but it still points to a bar that has been considerably lowered. Emotions weren't driving the discourse for debate, but an objective framework.)
Ultimately, there's plenty to feel guilty about. McClay says, “Whatever donation I make to a charitable organization, it can never be as much as I could have given. I can never diminish my carbon footprint enough, or give to the poor enough, or support medical research enough, or otherwise do the things that would render me morally blameless. Colonialism, slavery, structural poverty, water pollution, deforestation—there’s an endless list of items for which you and I can take the rap.”
Since most of us are lucky souls, we feel the burden of responsibility that comes with it. But we can never take it all on. Hence, the guilt overwhelms us as sin (yet, most of us can't even see it as sin, but just as outrage.)
McClay notes that the “fundamental truth about sin in the Judeo-Christian tradition is that sin must be paid for or its burden otherwise discharged.” Without religion being the foundation for culture, our psychic discharge for all this guilt moves from the vertical to the horizontal. If you don't have a metaphysical worldview to handle those internal debts, you're going to project your baggage on to the world (or the religion of politics).
Brooks elaborates, “Instead of seeing moral struggle as something between you and God (the religious version) or as something that happens between the good and evil within yourself (the classical version), moral struggle now happens primarily between groups.” Usually, this works itself out by groups identifying as victim or for the victim and against the oppressor.
Without a framework of self-reflection or atonement, we are led astray to discharge our anxiety onto the other. This leads to scapegoating, shaming, and the inability to see the complexity in an issue. Our moral discourse collapses on to itself and is relegated to hasty emotional judgments.
Guilt is a real trickster. Until we can robustly take it on within ourselves and in a relationship with a higher authority, we are in danger of falling into flimsy approaches to working with groups with dissimilar values and resolving worldly concerns that require cooperation.